DORAL, Fla. — Former president Donald Trump on Monday suggested that Democrats have embraced antisemitism in a way Republicans have not, even as he has a long history of trafficking in antisemitic tropes and criticizing Jewish Democrats.
“The anti-Jewish hatred has returned even here in America, in our streets, our media and our college campuses, and within the ranks of the Democrat Party, in particular,” Trump said during remarks commemorating the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, which triggered a war in the Middle East.
“I will tell you that it’s not in the Republican Party,” he added, speaking before a couple hundred attendees at Trump National Doral Miami, his golf resort. “The Republican Party has not been infected by this horrible disease.”
It is an argument Trump has repeatedly made over the past year as he has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel and courted support from Jewish voters. However, Trump has faced criticism for his own comments and for his associations with people who have made antisemitic remarks.
Last month, he said in back-to-back speeches that Jewish people “would have a lot to do with a loss” if he was defeated in the Nov. 5 election, and he questioned the sanity of Jewish Democrats. (Jewish Americans have long favored Democrats by a wide margin.) Trump also previously falsely accused Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) — the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States — of being a “proud member of Hamas.”
He has also regularly spoken about American Jews as if Israel were their country, rather than the United States — that characterization of dual loyalty is considered an antisemitic trope — and criticized American Jews for being insufficiently appreciative of his record on Israel.
Trump has not addressed reports that Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina, whom he has boosted, once described himself as a “black NAZI!” on an internet pornography forum. (In a recent CNN article, Robinson denied making the comments attributed to him.)
The event Monday, leading up to Trump’s remarks, was largely filled with somber speeches from speakers, including members of Congress and Jewish community leaders, to mark the first anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas militants that left about 1,200 people dead.
Organizers held a candle-lighting ceremony for the first portion of the event, where each speaker and others, including a few Holocaust survivors, lit a candle in remembrance of the lives lost.
Several speakers said the Hamas attack never would have happened if Trump were in office — a claim Trump repeated in his remarks.
Miriam Adelson, an Israeli American physician and conservative megadonor, took the stage with Trump. Adelson is expected to give as much as $100 million in support of him this election cycle.
The crowd chanted “Trump, Trump, Trump!” and stood up cheering when the former president was introduced — a stark shift from the sober energy in the room throughout the candle-lighting ceremony. Trump and Adelson walked out to his usual campaign walkout song, “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. And he exited to his usual closing-out song, “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People.
Others who spoke at the event included Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos A. Gimenez and María Elvira Salazar of Florida. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) addressed the attendees, too.
Before the event began, Nikolay Spevak, 94, a Holocaust survivor and retired mechanical engineer, said he supports Trump because he wants the war to end.
“I don’t like what Biden is doing,” said Spevak, who is originally from Belarus. “Trump will stop the war.”
Nancy Rand, 59, a makeup artist and resident of the Miami suburb of Aventura, said she started voting for Trump in 2016 after years of not identifying with a political party and previously voting for former president Barack Obama.
“I want somebody who is fighting to protect the American people,” Rand said, arguing that President Joe Biden failed Israel.